Yes, but the reasons are idiotic: They're not moral, or ethical, or survival, or even rational.

They're economic.

And the only reason why they're economic is because Capitalism only works under a policy of constant growth which simply is not possible in a finite system.

The solution, then, is not the keep increasing the population for economic prosperity's sake, but to throw away Capitalism entirely and adopt a new economic metric that doesn't rely on growth and profit as the be-all and end-all of human endeavor.

The biggest side effect of the population leveling off is that once the baby boomers die off, there will be a massive world-wide worker shortage. Countries will be fighting to let immigrants in. It will be the greatest boon to the Middle Class since the Black Death.

If you look at current and projected water shortages its simple to see that over-population is a real problem and there are not enough resources to sustain our current global population, never mind an additional few billion.

Babyboomers not being able to retire to a jet setting life of luxory like medieval Royalty shouldn't be the arbitrator of policies. Unfortunately it is and western civilization looks to be committing suicide because of it.

GAT_00:Only if you're worried about the ratio of white people to everyone else.

This.

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal recently that began by saying "hey, the middle class is vanishing because of birth rates! Let's use 'white and college educated' as a stand-in for middle class, because that's what we think when we think middle class."

Ishkur:Yes, but the reasons are idiotic: They're not moral, or ethical, or survival, or even rational.

They're economic.

And the only reason why they're economic is because Capitalism only works under a policy of constant growth which simply is not possible in a finite system.

The solution, then, is not the keep increasing the population for economic prosperity's sake, but to throw away Capitalism entirely and adopt a new economic metric that doesn't rely on growth and profit as the be-all and end-all of human endeavor.

We have to change our priorities here.

Profit's a fine motivator/metric. Profit GROWTH is the killer. When all those assholes in the 80s decided to fetishize financial industry gambling, we all lost.

Fertility panic isn't so much related to overpopulation as it is to funding the old people's pensions. If we don't have enough young people we're going to have to go all soylent green on the old folks homes.

Well, the Age of Post-Scarcity is coming, and it will be a slow burn over a couple hundred years rather than a complete overhaul within a single generation, which is how all economic systems transform into new ones (ie: Manorialism--->Mercantilism--->Capitalism). And it's going to start with the biggest issue of the 21st century (besides overpopulation, global warming, and dwindling resources): Employment.

As automation replaces the jobs that humans used to do, we're going to see an increasing amount of society capable of running itself. And when it gets to a point where only a fraction of full-time jobs exist and the system is capable of supporting up to 80% unemployment without totally collapsing1.

Why do we work? To make money, obviously. Why do we want to make money? So we can buy stuff that makes our lives more comfortable. Why does this stuff cost money? Because there is only so much of it about. If there's not enough of something, it has value. It's worth something. Rarity is expensive. Everything abundant is worthless. It is free. I'll come back to this point later.

10,000 years ago, 100% of the population worked on providing enough food to sustain everyone in the tribe.5,000 years ago, 80% of the population worked on providing enough food to sustain everyone in the city-state.1,000 years ago, 60% of the population worked on providing enough food to sustain everyone in the kingdom.200 years ago, 40% of the population worked on providing enough food to sustain everyone in the country.Today, less than 10% of our population actively work on providing enough food for the rest of us.

This level of efficiency will soon spread to all industries. Automation, industrial processes, manufacturing and mass production will provide for all, with very little human labor required. Some companies are already so streamlined and efficient that they can execute business operations and move product with a skeleton force that keeps shrinking. Additionally, with service-oriented architecture, one man can run a complete business all by himself without the need for employees. His business operations are modular -- he hires labor when needed....part-time, temporary, contract work.

So what then? What happens when a businesses can be run perfectly fine without employees? Without payroll? Without you? What happens when one man can do the job of one million (like farmers do now)?

We are rapidly approaching that age. The age of post-scarcity and post-capitalism.

We've seen what happens to media (cf. internet) when it reaches a state of absolute abundance -- it becomes worthless. It becomes free. It becomes accessible to everyone everywhere, equally, all the time. Now stretch this same paradigm across all sectors, all industries, all segments of human consumption. What happens?

Maintenance and upkeep of our system is being handled by fewer and fewer personnel. Automation makes things cheaper, more efficient, more abundant. Without scarcity, there is no value. No value, no cost. No cost, no need to pay for it. And if you don't need to pay for anything, then why need money? And if you don't need money, then why work?

Since Capitalism is a resource-based system that requires scarcity to operate, it will ultimately be discarded -- abundance makes it meaningless. What will people live/work for then? Since everything is taken care of, social acceptance within a peer group and self-actualization become prime goals (youtube is a perfect example of this: When people can't find work, they invent their own things to do...even if its just dumb Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake parodies).

I like to envision a Star Trekian future where the essential work (the 2%ers) is handled by different segments of the population during different stages of their lives, like shifts. It would be a mandatory service thing (ie: every 10 years, you must put in six months of labor) that rotates through the populace. So in an average life, most people would only work about 6000 hours. The rest of their lives they do whatever they like.

But I can't see any of this being a feasible reality for another century or so, when technology/AI improves and money becomes even more of an abstraction than it is now. But the key economic indicator is scarcity: Things have value because they are rare. We obtain them by exchanging them with other rare/finite things, namely currency. Once we get over this notion and officially annihilate scarcity (and the need to work for it), then Capitalism will be truly dead and done away with.

But it will come naturally, through social and technological progress, not through revolution. And it will come gradually, over the course of several generations. Not all at once, and certainly not within our lifetimes.

But before all that, we have to evaluate what we live and work for, and why. And we must come to accept the notion that a life of work isn't our destiny (even if we want it). We must evolve beyond the the idea that our lives are governed by the salary and the paycheck.

That might be a difficult thing to do.

/1 You might think this will never be possible, but we're already almost there. Society is humming along now taking care of a great number of people who don't contribute any value to the system: The very poor, the very rich, the handicapped, the disabled, the sick, the elderly, children, students, and the unemployed, underemployed and unemployable are all being supported quite comfortably by the people who are..... and somehow this is not a net negative on society.

When it comes to immigration, demographers have a general rule of thumb: Countries with fertility rates below the replacement level tend to attract immigrants, not send them. And so, when a country's fertility rate collapses, it often ceases to be a source of immigration.

Many Latin American countries have already fallen below the replacement level. It's not a coincidence that sub-replacement countries - such as Uruguay, Chile, Brazil and Costa Rica - send the U.S. barely any immigrants at all. The vast majority of our immigrants come from above-replacement countries, such as Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.

But even though they're still above-replacement, those countries are witnessing epic fertility declines too.

Consider Mexico, which over the last 30 years has sent roughly two-thirds of all the immigrants - legal and illegal - who came to the United States. In 1970, the Mexican fertility rate was 6.72. Today, it's hovering at the 2.1 mark - a drop of nearly 70% in just two generations. And it's still falling.

The result is that from 2005 to 2010, the U.S. received a net of zero immigrants from Mexico. Certainly some of that change can be attributed to the Great Recession, particularly the slowdown in construction and the housing industry. But we may also be witnessing the beginning of a structural change in our immigration relationship.

It's important to understand that Mexico's experience is not unique but rather is part of a global phenomenon. Today, 97% of the world's population lives in countries where the fertility rate is falling. And once a country's fertility rate starts dropping, it nearly always settles far below the replacement level. And because of this, most demographic models project that the world's population will peak sometime before the end of this century, and then begin contracting - for the first time since the Black Death ravaged Europe.

Differently than population growth, which is slowing and likely to peak in a few decades given current trends.

Literacy for girls, vaccination for childhood diseases, and wider access to various forms of birth control usually bring fertility rates down to replacement within a generation or two.

If momma can make her own money, and knows her babies aren't going to snuff it at a 50% rate before the age of three, she throttles back her breeding rate. Same goes for the men...most guys would prefer to support 3 kids instead of six. Just show him where the condoms are.

//you want us to have kids? Then you're going to have to separate the idea of making a living from being productive because if the graphs we see are correct any amount of productivity increase you create now is going into someone else's pocket immediately, and that's no way to secure a future. It's not logical to breed when you know your just making serfs for someone else's amusement.

super_grass:I can't wait to see the day when Europe and America is majority nonwhite and their wealth and power stripped away. Only by then could the world be a peaceful and diverse society free of hate.

In the late 1960s ZPG became a big political movement in the U.S. and parts of Europe, with strong links to environmentalism and feminism. Yale University was a stronghold of the ZPG activists who believed "that a constantly increasing population is responsible for many of our problems: pollution, violence, loss of values and of individual privacy."[8] Founding fathers of the movement were Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, and Thomas Eisner. Ehrlich stated: "The mother of the year should be a sterlized woman with two adopted children."

My father was an OB/GYN in the '60s and 70's. I remember him wearing a ZPG button on his lab coat.That was the thinking post baby boom, and he was a supporter of that cause. Geez Dad, what a waste of time.

Well, when you base retirement plans on Ponzi schemes you need more growth.

I'm not saying there's not room for more growth, but have you seen a graph of human population growth?

Population is a huge concern whether it's not having enough workers to support the old folks or so many people that resources like food, water and energy because a problem not to mention environmental concerns.

I'm sure we as a species will survive but we're going to have issues with population.

xcv:I'm not even white and I mourn the loss of Young White Women that are in sharp decline against the world's total population. Nearly every heterosexual man of every ethnicity prefers them, with increased competition for a shrinking supply, YWW are going to become an extremely valuable commodity on the planet, again. Wars were fought over them in the past, hopefully 3D printers and gene expression therapy will solve some of the demand.

Cool More Hot Latinas FOR ME!

I welcome my new Minority overlords, wash me and send me to their room

When your descendants have been enslaved, brutalized, and have lost their names, for 300 years. Until then, STFU.

How far back do we get to go? I was never a slave nor a slaveowner, but my ancestors have been both. What's the statute of limitations for playing the victim card for people who died generations before you were born?

GAT_00:Only if you're worried about the ratio of white people to everyone else.

A lot of the classic 'brown people' donor countries are on the glidepath down, too. Mexico is at '2.1' replacement level right now. Turkey (Europe's analog through the 80s) is also at or even a little below 2.1. Brazil is well below 2 at this point. And they're all still falling, presumably until they get down to Italy/S.Korea/Japan levels.

giveitarest:Like most growth, world population is more likely logistics growth than exponential. We may have passed the inflection point, which indicates population will level off around 12-13 billion.

Many demographers have the peak out at below 10bn, roughly the middle of this century. The d/dx is steep.

Ed Willy:Don't forget the Japanese. Half the incentive for creating robots is so they can avoid having to open their borders to permanent immigration.

Japan is the country to watch, because they're the first down the path. Despite arguably the most commercialized/advertised/consumerist society on earth, there's a whole growing generation of younger Japanese who are barely tied into the system (no real place for them) and decidedly anti-consumption.

Incontinent_dog_and_monkey_rodeo:The real secret is the way we're moving into a "post-scarcity" age, where people will only work if they want to. Machines do things cheaply and efficiently, and fewer and fewer people have more than one child.

And we'll see how that works psychologically. We've got subcultures where there's no cultural demand or outright need to work for sustenance. The examples we have are housing projects/ghettos, council estates in the UK, first nations reserves, and the like. As a species, we don't have a great track record of adapting to irrelevance.

There seems to be the attitude that "all old folks need to be looked after." My mother's in her late eighties and still lives independantly, my dad worked full-time into his sixties and part-time into his seventies, and my next-door neighbour right into his eightieth year was still working in his garage almost every day and up on his roof checking shingles every summer. He'd still be doing that if cancer hadn't gotten him.Get a hobby, keep your mind active, and chances are pretty good you won't end your days drooling in a chair in a nursing home. Number one killer of old folks is boredom.

Those claiming that the worry about declining population is primarily related to race should take a look at worldwide growth rates - fertility is declining everywhere, not just in "white person world." UN projections put peak population as happening sometime in the next 20-30 years or so, possibly more quickly than that. Immigration can't make up the difference forever - indeed we're already seeing that in the US, with Mexican immigration dropping significantly due to a combination of the economic crisis, combined with rising living standards in Mexico (due in part to falling fertility rates). I don't put a value judgment on whether declining populations worldwide will be bad or good, but it will certainly be different - it's probably never happened before (yeah, black death, etc., but plagues, famines, and so on generally only impacted one region at any given time), and certainly not voluntarily. We're walking into uncharted territory here and I think it's a bit Pollyanna-ish to think that it's not going to cause major changes. Change can be good, but it can also be bad - hopefully we'll get the good kind, but we should prepare for the bad, just in case.

What do you want? The prime child rearing generation right now is Y and they are stuck living with the parents that raised them because jobs that did pay a living wage were downsized and ship to china. So they can't afford an apartment, a car, or their own family.

Considering advancing science and technology 1 to 3 billion is optimal and quite manageable. Over 5 is starting to push it, over 7 is really stressing it, and 10 billion our efficiency of management goes to the infinitesimal zero.

Lady Beryl Ersatz-Wendigo:So what would be the optimal number of people on this planet? We'd need a number large enough to improve and maintain our existing systems yet not so large that they consumed every last resource on Earth.

And as a progressive humanist, all I can say is: good. White people are oppressors, and they should have a taste of their own medicine at the hands of their victims. I can't wait to see the day when Europe and America is majority nonwhite and their wealth and power stripped away. Only by then could the world be a peaceful and diverse society free of hate.

2/10. I bet you started feeling cocky about your solid effort on the first two sentences only to slip on that last sentence.

Happy Hours:Well, when you base retirement plans on Ponzi schemes you need more growth.

SS isn't a Ponzi scheme and it doesn't need more growth.

SS is fine so long as there are always more working people than retired people -- that's not a Ponzi scheme. The big SS crunch over the next 15 years is because the Boomber are too numerous and they didn't have enough children.

Ishkur:Yes, but the reasons are idiotic: They're not moral, or ethical, or survival, or even rational.

They're economic.

And the only reason why they're economic is because Capitalism only works under a policy of constant growth which simply is not possible in a finite system.

The solution, then, is not the keep increasing the population for economic prosperity's sake, but to throw away Capitalism entirely and adopt a new economic metric that doesn't rely on growth and profit as the be-all and end-all of human endeavor.

We have to change our priorities here.

I wish I could give this post the HERO tag. I also agree with this quote FTFA " If this is a new fad in government policy, I think I'll pass. Simply producing larger raw numbers of people is no substitute for a society where families produce the children they can love and afford to raise. "

Exactly. One of the reasons I don't have any children myself is because among my sibling there are more 15 nieces and nephews with my eldest brother has nine kids all to himself. He doesn't have any kids imo, what he's got is a human resources issue.

Fubini:Fertility panic isn't so much related to overpopulation as it is to funding the old people's pensions. If we don't have enough young people we're going to have to go all soylent green on the old folks homes.

Japan and Italy are already zooming down that hill, with China right on their ass and picking up speed.

As a planet, we need to figure out how to deal with most people living to 80 and most women only having two or three kids. Not the old model of croaking at fifty and leaving behind six sickly kids.

I'm with Gat on this one. I see white racists complain about being out-bred by the browns all the time and all I can think is, "You can't stand your own women enough to fark them. It's almost like subconsciously you aren't convinced of your own superiority after all."

We're at seven billion and still breeding like rabbits. (Projected world population in 2050: TEN billion). My money is still on "Overpopulation will kill us all." Or at the very least the world will be nothing but stinking, polluted cities and farms.

And as a progressive humanist, all I can say is: good. White people are oppressors, and they should have a taste of their own medicine at the hands of their victims. I can't wait to see the day when Europe and America is majority nonwhite and their wealth and power stripped away. Only by then could the world be a peaceful and diverse society free of hate.

Anyone know of any economists who are modeling alleged post-scarcity societies by looking at sub-sets of current societies? It seems like we have some fiction, some hypothetical notions, and some anecdotes. Are there any data?

Happy Hours:super_grass: Translation: white people are being bred out.

And as a progressive humanist, all I can say is: good. White people are oppressors, and they should have a taste of their own medicine at the hands of their victims. I can't wait to see the day when Europe and America is majority nonwhite and their wealth and power stripped away. Only by then could the world be a peaceful and diverse society free of hate.

Happy Hours:I'm not saying there's not room for more growth, but have you seen a graph of human population growth?

Population is a huge concern whether it's not having enough workers to support the old folks or so many people that resources like food, water and energy because a problem not to mention environmental concerns

Why are we still using systems (political, economic, social) designed when there were only a billion people worldwide?

mr lawson:Ishkur: MugzyBrown: Actually the structure of the faulty economics (not capitalism) put in place by most western gov'ts is what needs constant growth. Capitalism does not.

Explain.

(keep in mind that Capitalism relies on scarcity to operate and will be naturally cast aside in the distant future anyway as we approach post-scarcity civilization)

I applaud you for always trying to explain economics to most of these people. You have a lot more patience than i. They took maybe one macro course and then parrot the economic talking point (classical vs Keynesian) of whichever side of the political spectrum they fall on. I gave up a long time ago.

mr lawson:Bashar and Asma's Infinite Playlist: Those damn poor people. They catch all the breaks.

/"Lucky Ducky! Grr..."

Your snark aside, hopefully, even you would agree it is bad public policy to incentivise the creation of large families by poor people.

I think the creation of large families by poor people is going to happen whether they're incentivized or not. Be it from lack of education, lack of access to health care and contraception, or just a general fatalistic local culture, those kids are going to be born and likely end up in the same environment that birthed them. I find it hard to believe that anything but an extremely small subset of welfare and support recipients take their social service possibilities into account before deciding whether or not to have a child (or multiple for that matter).

"Come to bed, Terry. I want another extra hundred bucks a week from the welfare office.""Oh baby. You know just what to say to turn me on."

the fact that the corporate media lives off of corporate advertising purchases, which are tied to corporate profits, which are increased by lower wages, which are lowered by mass immigration from the third world, this is purely coincidental.

Britney Spear's Speculum:ghare: If only there were some sort of...solution. One to end this. A final solution is what we need for Them.

You do realize that most of america's poor is white, right?

And as an aside... I never mentioned any racial group in my comments. Any preconceptions about which racial group I'm speaking of is really a reflection of the reader of my comments than it is about me.

GAT_00:Koodz: I'm with Gat on this one. I see white racists complain about being out-bred by the browns all the time and all I can think is, "You can't stand your own women enough to fark them. It's almost like subconsciously you aren't convinced of your own superiority after all."

Maximer:Poor and under educated people have large families because the government provides a financial incentive for that group of people. Also, they start having children at a much younger age.

Meanwhile, the educated and working class of people are busy receiving and education and building a career for themselves. They usually have kids later in life and at a time when perhaps they can only have one or two kids.

Of course, the poor people don't care. They receive government handouts and are comfortable living in poor environments so long as they aren't required to do any real work. No one should be surprised by this.

If only there were some sort of...solution. One to end this. A final solution is what we need for Them.

When I was in high school, I had an argument with a classmate in history class about the French Revolution. After I made what I felt was a really good point, the guy who was arguing with me asked me how many scout merit badges I had, and if I had attained the rank of Eagle Scout. The entire class started to laugh at this idiot, who honestly thought that his merit badges and Eagle Scout ranking could help him to win an argument. That was very similar to what you've done here. That kid was only 16 years old, though, so his ignorance is somewhat forgivable. How old are you?

And as a progressive humanist, all I can say is: good. White people are oppressors, and they should have a taste of their own medicine at the hands of their victims. I can't wait to see the day when Europe and America is majority nonwhite and their wealth and power stripped away. Only by then could the world be a peaceful and diverse society free of hate.

Or ... brown people are breeding themselves into new depths of poverty and dragging the rest of the world down with them. Lots of different ways you could look at it. I'd say both ways of looking at it are shamefully racist. Reproduction shouldn't be about different races trying to out produce the others. That's such a retarded backward way of looking at the world, it's shocking to find a neanderthal still lurking around in 2013.

Bashar and Asma's Infinite Playlist:Maximer: Of course, the poor people don't care. They receive government handouts and are comfortable living in poor environments so long as they aren't required to do any real work. No one should be surprised by this.

Those damn poor people. They catch all the breaks.

/"Lucky Ducky! Grr..."

For many years I worked in a very poor area. I started off as a progressive individual who felt that the poor in America were only poor because of their environment. However, as I spent more time working in that area it became more and more obvious that their continued poverty was due to their own actions and poor choices. My sympathy for them have diminished drastically.

Now, go to a third world country where they experience true poverty and that's a different story. American "poverty" is unique.

Acravius:Uncontrolled birth rate - Panic! 1910's to 1970'sOne of the stated reason for German Expansionism and Japanese Expansionism was the need for space for population growth. Japan feared a 1975 population projection estimating 106 million people, and Germans we're augmenting their argument that Liebensraum (space for the growth of the Germanic peoples could be carved out of Eastern Europe). Population growth models for both were very close to being accurate (5% variance), but those economies absorbed and utilized all methodologies including massive trade in food for technology and wealth to power through their population growth and indstrial/economic development.

Industrialized Country Reproductive Rate Falls - Panic, 2000 to presentThe graying of the industrialized countries does pose a challenge, but it isn't one that can't be overcome by proper planning.

The biggest real problem in America isn't a population issue directly, it is that we've built our primary infrastructure in the country flat and wide, instead of compactly/vertically. The 'burbs literally are consuming all of our resources, fuel to travel, supermarket/superstore sprawl, school bussing, home to work travel.If we reformatted our cities to be vertical, NYC would only need to cover 1 square mile providing 5000 square ft of apartment space per family of 4 in 20,000 58 story buildings (allowing for 5600 58 story buildings for commercial/industrial and food production/distribution, hospitals, emergency services etc). If we were to take this compact approach, we could reduce the needed infrastructure of the city by nearly 10,000 combined miles of roads, subways, bus lines not to mention all of the other government investments like school properties, police, fire and emergency service vehicles, etc. Literally we could do away with supporting 90% of our current expenditure of time and money, by making our cities vertical instead of sprawling wastelands.Imagine the exact same scenario in LA, and we are ta ...

LOL. How do you grow food to feed that population density, or get clean water into the system? Just tell farmers: You won't see people at all but just continue growing. Additionally the travel costs of food is going to be ridiculous.

Basically, we're farked unless we can find a cure for what ails us (Oil addiction).

The more of these miserable, flea bitten, nasty ass, over indulgent, perpetually adolescent, resource wasting humans there are on the planet, the more people there are literally standing on the face of what could be a beautiful, loving, planet-being that is crying because there are too many people standing on her magnificent face. If more people would kill off more people or just die or suicide and let the intelligent, nurturing creatures like cats and dogs being to thrive, the Earth might be reborn with a renewed spirit of love, trust and respect for one another. All characteristics absent from the human species. I could see a world where all around are animals, caring for their young, teaching the next generation, helping others in need, and me. Naked.

And as a progressive humanist, all I can say is: good. White people are oppressors, and they should have a taste of their own medicine at the hands of their victims. I can't wait to see the day when Europe and America is majority nonwhite and their wealth and power stripped away. Only by then could the world be a peaceful and diverse society free of hate.

Earl of Chives:super_grass: Translation: white people are being bred out.

And as a progressive humanist, all I can say is: good. White people are oppressors, and they should have a taste of their own medicine at the hands of their victims. I can't wait to see the day when Europe and America is majority nonwhite and their wealth and power stripped away. Only by then could the world be a peaceful and diverse society free of hate.

Exactly, just look at Africa. Land of peace and love. Lol.

Yes, the natives of south america hace always been such nice people who kill babies to the sun god

So what would be the optimal number of people on this planet? We'd need a number large enough to improve and maintain our existing systems yet not so large that they consumed every last resource on Earth.

MaxSupernova:super_grass: Translation: white people are being bred out.

And as a progressive humanist, all I can say is: good. White people are oppressors, and they should have a taste of their own medicine at the hands of their victims. I can't wait to see the day when Europe and America is majority nonwhite and their wealth and power stripped away. Only by then could the world be a peaceful and diverse society free of hate.

2/10. I bet you started feeling cocky about your solid effort on the first two sentences only to slip on that last sentence.

super_grass:I can't wait to see the day when Europe and America is majority nonwhite and their wealth and power stripped away. Only by then could the world be a peaceful and diverse society free of hate.

You know who the most racist people in the world are? Asians. On other Asians.

GAT_00:Koodz: I'm with Gat on this one. I see white racists complain about being out-bred by the browns all the time and all I can think is, "You can't stand your own women enough to fark them. It's almost like subconsciously you aren't convinced of your own superiority after all."

And as a progressive humanist, all I can say is: good. White people are oppressors, and they should have a taste of their own medicine at the hands of their victims. I can't wait to see the day when Europe and America is majority nonwhite and their wealth and power stripped away. Only by then could the world be a peaceful and diverse society free of hate.

Ishkur:Yes, but the reasons are idiotic: They're not moral, or ethical, or survival, or even rational.

They're economic.

And the only reason why they're economic is because Capitalism only works under a policy of constant growth which simply is not possible in a finite system.

The solution, then, is not the keep increasing the population for economic prosperity's sake, but to throw away Capitalism entirely and adopt a new economic metric that doesn't rely on growth and profit as the be-all and end-all of human endeavor.

We have to change our priorities here.

We're not ready to stop growth. A world wide GPD/Capita of $12,000 (PPP indexed) isn't exactly a super comfortable wage. Maybe when we get to the US's total we can stop concentrating on growth and start concentrating on wealth for a change. (Time=money, so wealth is the ability to spend your time not working.)

Lack of energy is the current inhibitor for growth. We need to find a way to extract more energy from this planet so that we can spread and harvest other planets (Jupiter, here we come!) I am pinning many of my hopes to ITER. Harnessing the power of fusion is still the future.

Koodz:I'm with Gat on this one. I see white racists complain about being out-bred by the browns all the time and all I can think is, "You can't stand your own women enough to fark them. It's almost like subconsciously you aren't convinced of your own superiority after all."

Pumpernickel bread:Well, fewer humans, particularly in developed countries is certainly better for maintaining the habitability of the earth, but governments depend on an ever-expanding tax-base to make good on those promises they made.

Private choices are too blame, too. Every retirement planning guide shows a WASPY couple that look 50 retiring to one of their fantastic beach homes, drinking wine and eating great food, before going on an all-inclusive cruise to the Caribbean.

What they sometimes fail to note is that investment based retirement plans and Social Security share a common thread: They both require extracting wealth from future productivity to fund the retirement of old people.

Well, fewer humans, particularly in developed countries is certainly better for maintaining the habitability of the earth, but governments depend on an ever-expanding tax-base to make good on those promises they made.

In the late 1960s ZPG became a big political movement in the U.S. and parts of Europe, with strong links to environmentalism and feminism. Yale University was a stronghold of the ZPG activists who believed "that a constantly increasing population is responsible for many of our problems: pollution, violence, loss of values and of individual privacy."[8] Founding fathers of the movement were Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, and Thomas Eisner. Ehrlich stated: "The mother of the year should be a sterlized woman with two adopted children."

My father was an OB/GYN in the '60s and 70's. I remember him wearing a ZPG button on his lab coat.That was the thinking post baby boom, and he was a supporter of that cause. Geez Dad, what a waste of time.